It's a Regular No Man's Sky Conundrum

As the title suggests, I'm still spending much of my gaming time trying to puzzle out the complex feelings that I have for No Man's Sky.  There are times where I'm generally having fun, there are times when I'm irritated, and there are times where I've genuinely questioned why I'm still playing.  Somehow, through this strange brew of emotions, I've kept going.  I've managed to find something exciting or motivating and that's what has kept me in the game.

The Fun
For me, the best part of No Man's Sky is exploring--I'm talking completely setting aside any of the main storylines and just flying to different systems and seeing what's out there.  Each new planet offers up an opportunity to discover new (and absolutely bizarre) creatures.  The creatures have definitely been the highlight as I have found some other aspects of planetary exploration to fall under the "irritating" category.

My strategy for exploration is to set down on a planet, scan everything within the general scanning radius, and then to set down the signal booster.  Encrypted navigation data is all over the place (most commonly in containers that require an AtlasPass V1 but also scattered around space stations) and I've accumulated a ton of it.  I like to run through the entire cycle of options that require navigation data and then head for those specific spots.  Depending on my current need for resources, I will usually try to drop by some resource nodes for some mining.  Occasionally, during my running around, I will stumble upon something that didn't get picked up by the signal booster--a drop pod or a crashed ship.  Finding those hidden gems is exciting and adds to the magic of exploration.

On the planet of Portlandia resides the massive Fredosaurus Rex.

I've finally grown tired of allowing the game to name everything and have come up with my own plan for naming--I'm going to name each planet, it's fauna, and zones after my favorite shows, games, and movies.  The first planet where I employed this strategy was the third "paradise" planet that I've found.  The warning message popped up to say that the planet has extreme weather in the form of boiling humidity, but so far I haven't experienced any adverse conditions.  The planet is largely covered with water and it rains all the time, so I decided to name it after the rainy city and setting for the sketch comedy "Portlandia."  I've begun naming the creatures after the different characters from the show and it still makes me chuckle when I scan them and see a Candace flying overhead.

A cheesy pose with my ship, the Qwib-Qwib.

Oddly, I've also enjoyed the task of repairing crashed ships.  I repaired a class B hauler called the Osairita Calculator XVIII and learned a few tricks along the way.  On one of my expeditions I discovered a better ship--a class A explorer!  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to upgrade to a better quality ship, so even though I had just sunk a bunch of time into fixing a ship, I found myself fixing another ship.  With my new bag of tricks, fixing up my new explorer was a relative breeze.  I decided I should name it in honor of one of the most unfortunately named ships of the Mass Effect series--behold, the Qwib-Qwib.  The Qwib-Qwib is highly maneuverable and has the cargo space needed for accumulating goodies to sell.  My next goal is to find one of the coveted class S ships.

In the process of trying to spruce up my base and complete the many base improvement missions, I finally reached the point where you can build an exocraft geobay.  Running around on foot was getting old, so having a vehicle is a massive improvement.  The Roamer exocraft is fun to drive around and greatly speeds up exploration.  It's nice to drive around and find new locations and resources.  There are also aspects of the exocraft that fall into the "irritating" category.

The Irritating
I started off with the positive, but there are also several parts of the game that bug the heck out of me.  One of the big irritators has been the fact that I've begun noticing that the variety within the planets that I'm exploring seems...well, somewhat disappointing.  I can bank on the fact that if I land on a toxic planet the flora will look almost the same as the flora on every single toxic planet--there will be some type of weird mushroom plant, a tentacle-y wavy plant, a green slimeball kind of plant....  In a way this makes some sense (evolutionarily, the plants would probably develop similarly in the same climate) but it detracts from the whole concept of uniqueness which is the hallmark of the game.  I'm hoping that with some more exploration (I will admit that I really haven't been to a large number of planets) that I will see more variety.

Reaching the point of finally having a vehicle for exploration was very exciting.  I stupidly assumed that your exocraft could be summoned to any location--much like your ship.  It turns out that you have to build an exocraft geobay on any planet where you want to use the darn thing!  The materials to build the geobay are mostly commonplace with the exception of paraffinium.  This means that I've had to resort to lugging around a bunch of paraffinium so I can drop a geobay.

There's another part of the geobay that I've been really questioning--why can't I build one geobay that can summon all three of the different types of exocraft?  It seems really stupid that I have to build three different geobays to be able to utilize the different vehicles (although I could see it maybe being very exploity if you could use all three vehicles and just fill up their inventories...).  I've settled on upgrading and utilizing the Roamer exocraft and probably won't use the other two at all.

Completing missions for the various alien factions can also be irritating.  The nice part of some of the missions is that they are things that you're already going to be doing like scanning flora or minerals.  The bad part of these missions is that there is very little variety within them--scan, kill sentinels, raid planetary depots, kill critters, feed critters, take a picture...it gets old quickly.  Raising your standing with aliens is vital to your ability to trade with them, so you can't really avoid completing these dull tasks.

Something else that I discovered through reading a couple of articles (which pop up on the Steam news page--PC Gamer Article, Kotaku Article) is that the multiplayer option is not without its kinks.  Twice I had random players join my game.  I didn't give it much thought and they seemed to leave the game fairly quickly.  I had a few brief panicked moments about how exactly those players could interact with my game world.  Could they raid my storage (not like I have anything overly valuable)?  Could they destroy my ships?  Destroy my base?  What exactly could they do?

My base is finally starting to look less sad.
  I wouldn't want it destroyed by someone vindictive.

It turns out that other players can do some of those things.  No, they can't raid your storage or destroy your ships.  However, they can destroy your base.  They can simply fly to your base location and delete all your buildings.  The really stupid part of the whole thing is that they gain absolutely nothing from it--they don't get materials or units, they simply get the pleasure of being an asshat.  Another really stupid thing that players can do is to rename and upload any discoveries that you haven't already claimed.

With this knowledge of absolute trolldom, I decided to turn off network play.  I don't want all the hours I spent gathering and building to be destroyed by someone with the goal of griefing.  I think the vast majority of players out there are probably respectful and I've read some cute stories of people working together and having a great time with a total stranger.

The fact that other players have the option to perform these kind of actions definitely falls within the irritating category.  I think it would be fairly simple to make bases off-limits to interaction.

I've also been kind of sad that the last patch nerfed my favorite chromatic metal refining recipe (1 copper +1 pure ferrite= 3 chromatic metal).  Now, you only get 1:1 :(

Questioning Why
In the end, it can all seem like one giant grind.  There's a constant need for materials to fuel mining or terrain manipulation.  Fixing up a ship requires a massive amount of materials.  Adding to your base requires more materials...  I've had several points where I've felt frustrated.

The Qwib-Qwib 2.0 in its shiny glory.

I'm really hoping that with some more exploration that I will find a larger variety of planets.  For me, the jury is still out on whether or not I feel favorably about NMS.

UPDATE 8/11/2018:  The Qwib-Qwib was short lived.  Behold the Qwib-Qwib 2.0, an S-class ship that I found docked at a small trading outpost.

UPDATE #2 8/13/18:
I finally found a planet that broke out of the typical pattern that I kept seeing.  The waving blue grass, constant rainfall, and strange floating islands were a very welcome change from having every paradise planet feel like a carbon copy of the last one.

Finally, a planet with some variety!